


Best Laid Plans

by kenzz_95



Series: Trektober 2020 [15]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, M/M, Some background Sulu Chekov friendship because I wanted to, away missions gone wrong, cuddling for warmth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:27:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27008818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kenzz_95/pseuds/kenzz_95
Summary: An unexpected cold front hits the away team hard, forcing them to retreat to their tents until they can get a beam up from the Enterprise the next morning. Bones is freezing and Jim runs warm so Jim suggests they cuddle to conserve body heat but the experience takes a few turns he wasn't quite expecting.
Relationships: James T. Kirk/Leonard "Bones" McCoy
Series: Trektober 2020 [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1948633
Comments: 7
Kudos: 84
Collections: Trektober 2020





	Best Laid Plans

**Author's Note:**

> Trektober Day 15: Cuddling for Warmth
> 
> Hope you enjoy my favorite emotional support genius dumbasses.

Sometimes Jim wondered why they even bothered to _have_ a plan for away missions in the first place, as it nearly always went to shit shortly upon their arrival on a new planet. At least this time they weren’t being attacked by angry locals their sensors hadn’t picked up on. But this was almost worse, because angry locals could be reasoned with, weird weather patterns didn’t give a damn about your diplomatic abilities.

The Enterprise had been tasked with doing some surface scans of an uncharted planet, but there was an engineering part Scotty wanted to pick up in a nearby system and they didn’t need the whole ship for this mission, so they split up. Bones, Sulu, Chekov, and himself had gone down to the planet’s surface and the rest of the ship had jaunted over to pick up Scotty’s parts. The away team was going to spend two nights on the planet, and the first night had gone great. Jim had slept out under the stars, letting Bones have the tent to himself, and they had all had a lot of fun stargazing and talking and laughing and enjoying some time as friends in an environment that felt a little less formal, even though they were still technically working. The second day was good too, for the most part. They had gotten a lot done, and when darkness started to fall they felt confident that they had all they needed to leave when the Enterprise returned in the morning. But then the cold front hit, and it hit hard. 

Jim first noticed the chill in the wind around dinner, and then despite the fire they had made Bones and Sulu were pulling out their coats that Bones had made everyone bring just in case, and then finally Jim and Chekov had to swallow their Midwestern and Russian pride respectively and had to put their coats on as well. And then the snow started, effectively ending their fire and leaving them with no other options but to return to those tiny little tents they had brought with them. The little tents that, as it turned out, were far better suited for one than two. But it was okay because Bones was his best friend and they had shared small spaces before, especially back at the Academy when Jim’s roommate had kept sexiling him and Bones had had a double bed because being a grad student had its perks so Jim had just crashed in Bones’ bed with him. It had never been a big deal, but for some reason when Jim slithered into his sleeping bag he couldn’t help but notice just how close he was to Bones. The tent was barely big enough for them to sit shoulder to shoulder, and Jim would bet that when they laid down they would end up touching as they slept. Which, again, was _fine_ and not a big deal at all because it was Bones, Jim’s best friend in the entire goddamn galaxy, and if Jim were slightly fixated on just how close they were then there wasn’t a single good reason for it.

For the first little while after everyone retreated to their tents, Jim and Bones played cards with the deck that Bones had brought with him. Bones always trounced him in card games, which he made up for by beating Bones so effectively at chess that Bones didn’t even want to play most of the time. But eventually Jim noticed that Bones’ fingers, usually so steady and sure it was downright mesmerizing, started to get slow and a bit clunky as he picked up his cards and that was the end of activities that required their hands to be out of their pockets. Jim wished, not for the first or the last time that night, that he had brought gloves, but it was supposed to be the warm season on this planet. In fact, they had only brought coats at all because it was required Starfleet procedure when visiting new planets where an emergency beam out wouldn’t be possible, and Bones insisted on following it because apparently he didn’t particularly like treating hypothermia. 

The temperature just kept plummeting, dropping below freezing and was made even colder by the chill of the wind that kept trying to penetrate their tent. As Bones, ever the Georgia boy and not at all a fan of the cold, curled up in his sleeping bag, he checked his tricorder once more.

“Fuck,” he muttered, “It just keeps getting colder.”

“It’s just like Iowa in January,” Jim shrugged. He had felt worse. That didn’t mean he wasn’t cold, though. He definitely was.

“Say that again and I swear to God I’ll hit you,” Bones snapped, because Bones cold was not Bones in a good mood. “We ain’t equipped for temperatures like this. It gets much colder, we're gonna be lucky to stave off hypothermia ‘till the ship comes back in the morning.”

“What’s the prognosis, huh, doctor?” Jim asked lightly, the title more a term of affection than any sort of formality. He pulled himself in his sleeping bag as well. Fine, he was cold as hell too, he just wasn’t going to own up to it yet. He did have some pride, after all. 

“We should stay up tonight,” Bones suggested, “All of us. Ya know what?” He then flipped open his communicator and paged Sulu, because the wind was howling too loudly for them to shout across the tents, “Y’all doing okay over there?”

“Is nothing!” Chekov’s accented voice came over the comm, “Like summer in St. Petersburg!”

Jim knew for an absolute fact that there wasn’t a shred of truth in that, but he decided to let it go.

“I swear to God, Pasha,” Sulu muttered in the background of the comm.

“Yeah, we got one of those over here too,” Bones drawled, giving Jim a stink eye with just a little glimmer behind it. “Listen, it’s damn cold out here and we’re not properly outfitted for that. I don’t want any of us sleeping tonight, and I want one of you to comm me every hour so I can make sure y’all are awake and we won’t find you as popsicles come morning.”

Jim always had loved listening to Bones give orders, but he didn’t really know why. It made something twist deep inside him, listening to Bones speak so authoritatively.

“Uh, Captain?” Sulu asked, obviously looking for some sort of confirmation for that because obviously Bones outranked both Sulu and Chekov but Jim was still ranking officer here. He opened his mouth to say something but Bones beat him to it,

“Medical matters are my prerogative, Sulu. I expect a comm from one of you in an hour. McCoy out.”

Jim made it until shortly after Sulu’s first comm before it devolved a bit. Bones was curled up on his side, obviously trying to keep all his body heat as close to himself as possible, and Jim was lying in his sleeping bag as well, but propped up on his elbow. The pair were talking fairly casually, but Jim was uncomfortable and it was clear Bones was worse. In the end, it had been his idea because Bones constantly accused him of being a human space heater and he didn’t like seeing his best friend uncomfortable. 

“So,” Jim cleared his throat, “You wanna take advantage of me?”

“Excuse me?” Bones asked, eyebrows shooting up near his hairline.

“You always say I’m constantly warm and we’re probably better off trying to conserve body heat together, right?”

Bones’ eyebrows were still high on his forehead but he nodded, unzipped his sleeping bag and his coat, and beckoned Jim closer with a finger that dammit Jim _felt_ . Going on two years in deep space was doing weird things to him. He ignored that, though, and unzipped his own sleeping bag then zipped it onto the edge of Bones’ and scooted in closer to his friend. Jim had never exactly had personal space issues, and he and Bones were a bit more tactile than a lot of people were with their friends, but as they wrapped their arms around each other and pressed their chests together, Jim realized they hadn’t often been _this_ close with each other.

“Christ, kid, you’re _hot_ ,” Bones remarked, sliding his cold hands up the back of Jim’s uniform shirt to rest them on his back.

“I know, I get that a lot,” Jim winked. His nose was mere centimeters from Bones’, and he could count the freckles on his friends’ face. He did, just for the hell of it, and because what else was he going to do?

“So,” Jim started, twisting his legs between Bones’ not because he needed to but because it actually felt real damn good being this close to his friend. “What’ve you been up to lately?”

Bones laughed a little, a sound Jim felt what with them being chest to chest and all. “You know exactly what I’ve been up to lately, Jim. We work together, we live down the hall from each other, we see each other every damn day.”

“Whatever happened to that hot psychologist you were sending subspaces to for a while? I haven’t heard much about her lately.” Bones was famously tight lipped about his love life, even to Jim. Jim also had never much liked the hot psychologist that Bones had hooked up with on some starbase once, although he had never actually met the woman so there was no real reason for that.

“Nothing much to tell,” Bones shrugged, “She got stationed on the...I think it was the Endeavor? Maybe the Curie? I dunno. Chances of us running into each other again were pretty damn slim.”

“So that’s done then?”

“There was never anything to be done with. It was just some one time thing, we were both pretty drunk, we weren’t talking under the expectation of anything, she’s just a...frankly friend even sounds like a stretch. I dunno. It’s not a big deal.”

“Ya know, I didn’t think drunken hookups were really your style, Bones.”

“When you say it that way you make me sound like you,” Bones teased, “It was more a drunken lapse in judgment. Figure better that than to make the same mistake with someone I have to see every damn day.”

“I don’t really do that anymore,” Jim corrected his friend, feeling weirdly dedicated to setting that record straight.

“It was just a joke, Jim. I don’t give a damn what you do in your spare time.”

“I know, but I’m serious. That shrink they sent me to after the whole Kahn thing…”

“You mean when you died?”

“And you saved me? Yeah. Anyway, the man was so obnoxious. Ya know, I don’t think Betazoids should be allowed to be therapists, actually. Do you have any idea how many psych evals I successfully bullshitted my way through before they stuck me with that guy?”

“I could probably guess.”

“Couldn’t pull shit over on this guy, and if I left they’d never clear me for active duty again. And, oh no, he didn’t just want to talk about the whole dying thing, he wouldn’t give me his signature until he made me pull up a whole bunch of other shit, said it was only fair since I cheated on every other psych eval Starfleet ever gave me. I almost killed the guy at the time, I swear.”

“But it was good, in hindsight?” Bones guessed.

“Yeah, probably,” Jim shrugged and then, following some weird whim, he pulled his hand from the sleeping bag and splayed it across Bones’ cheek bone, stroking his thumb on his friend’s chin. Bones was watching his hand out of the corners of his eyes, but said nothing. He twisted his legs closer to Bones’, finding their current level of contact lacking, and the new position left Bones’ pelvis flat against his own.

“That a tricorder in your pocket, Bones?” Jim asked, sliding his hand from Bones’ face and resting it instead on his shoulder, just under the sleeping bag.

“Fuck you,” Bones quipped, and when Jim pressed ever closer Bones bit his lip. Hard. And...fuck, Jim could feel Bones’ dick, hard against his own thigh. It shouldn’t have been a big deal because Jim had seen Bones’ dick before. They were 23rd century men with a healthy attitude towards passing nudity that had unofficially cohabitated a lot during the Academy. But Jim had never _felt_ Bones’ dick before, and certainly not pressed hard against him. Jim’s own cock twitched at the pressure, the sensation of having every bit of Bones this close. From time to time, Jim had thought about Bones like this. How could he have not? His best friend was good looking, that was flat out undeniable, but this was different.

Jim kicked up his leg, hooking it around Bones’ hips, pressing them tighter together still. Bones bit his lip even harder, something heavy in those hazel eyes. Jim had never seen that expression before and shit, he was getting hard now too. He rolled his hips once and, oh yeah, he was definitely hard and Bones’ hands were shifting south on his back and…

Bone’s comm chimed, and he had to untangle himself from Jim to grab it. It was just Chekov, confirming that he and Sulu were awake and doing well. But that little interruption seemed to have ruined whatever kind of moment they had been having. Discarding his communicator, Bones laid back down with a slight distance from Jim.

“What’re you playing at, kid?” he asked, a strange and unreadable tone in his voice.

“You’re the one who got hard off hypothermia prevention,” Jim accused him. Please, like Jim had been the one to start this.

“What’re you playing at, kid?” Bones repeated, not allowing Jim to get off the hook that easily, “you’ve been actin’ weird this whole damn mission, so don’t deflect this.”

Jim just looked in those hazel eyes, the ones that always made him feel like he was coming home, and suddenly he was breathless, like he had just gotten hit by the damn Enterprise itself.

“I think I’m sorta in love with you, Bones,” Jim admitted, because nobody could ever accuse him of keeping his damn mouth shut with anything that wasn’t directly related to work. And it was true, and saying it only made it all the more true. Of course he was in love with Bones. Of course he was. How could he _not_ be? Bones was his home in a person, loyal to his dying day, the only person Jim ever felt truly himself with, and he was damn good looking to boot. He trusted Bones, and he trusted him so implicitly that he knew that even if Bones didn’t love him as Jim was realizing he did, they would still be okay.

“And when’d you make that realization?” Bones asked finally, a small smile on his face that calmed any fears Jim may have been having.

“Uh, like a minute ago,” Jim said, returning the smile, and Bones laughed, always a beautiful fucking sound and yeah, Jim maybe should’ve realized that earlier.

“Hmmm,” Bones hummed, “Interesting, as I’ve known you’re in love with me for a year, at least. Been waiting for you to figure that one out for a while. If only I had known the secret was in my pants the whole time.”

“It’s not that, it wasn’t that, it was…” Jim shook his head, because he didn’t know what it was, really. It was more of a culmination of things, when he thought about it, than a single moment itself. But it had oddly little to do with Bones’ cock, despite how wonderful it felt pressed against him. “Wait, you’ve known for a year?” Jim realized.

“Yeah. Seems you were the last to know. Can’t say I blame you, you’ve never been good with your own damn emotions,” Bones said, but he was pulling Jim closer again, throwing a strong thigh between Jim’s legs and yeah, yeah, Jim was still hard. “Tell me, Jim, was your plan to rub up against me until we both came in our pants like teenagers?”

“I, uh, wasn’t thinking that far ahead,” he admitted, taking a sharp intake of breath as Bones pressed harder against him, “I don’t mean to, uh, derail this, but you never mentioned if…”

“If I loved you too?” Bones guessed and Jim nodded into his neck. “‘Course I do, Jim. Of course I do. There’s a reason I was waiting for you to realize, ya know, and it wasn’t just because it was a bit frustrating watching you stare at me while being obviously clueless as to why.”

“You could’ve told me,” Jim pointed out, allowing himself to roll his hips against Bones’ thigh, still between his legs and damn if that didn’t feel good.

“Can’t really realize that for ya, kid,” Bones pointed out, then drew his leg back quickly and nearly caused Jim to let out an entirely embarrassing little whine in the process but he moved one, wonderfully steady and beautiful hand up to cup Jim’s jaw instead, which was also good, but in a different way. “Now, you and I are probably gonna have to choose tonight if we’d rather make a mess of our uniform pants or our sleeping bags but things,” Bones paused, pressed a kiss to the side of Jim’s lips, “have,” another kiss, to the other side, “an order.” Finally, Bones caught Jim’s lips in his own and Bones had a wonderful mouth, Jim had always thought that - really he didn’t know why he had never realized until now - and it turns out that wonderful mouth pressed against his own was a kind of wonderful that exceeded the bounds of that word. Jim deepened the kiss, exploring every inch of Bones’ mouth with his own, and holding his friend, but maybe more than now, close tightly. It may not have been what Jim had first had in mind when he suggested they conserve body heat together, at least not consciously, but it certainly was effective.

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this fic also is an accurate description of my plans to write an actual sex scene in this. Unfortunately I am allergic to writing porn. It is what it is.
> 
> Yes my headcanon that Bones is like the one person in all of Star Trek who's not a chess guy is me projecting, don't @ me.


End file.
